


Chatterbox

by BMPDynamite



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street (Movies 1984-1994), A Nightmare on Elm Street - All Media Types, Portal (Video Game)
Genre: (though he's honestly pretty tame here), Blood and Injury, Crack Treated Seriously, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Crossover, Freddy Is His Own Warning, Gen, Not Beta Read, Post-Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Post-Portal 2, The Author Regrets Nothing, Threats of Violence, least of all this, selectively mute chell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27345775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BMPDynamite/pseuds/BMPDynamite
Summary: After the Combine’s invasion and near-total destruction of humanity, it’s tough out there for monsters who feed on the fear of humans to survive. It’s even tougher when one of the few surviving humans is too stubborn to show fear, and too mute to scream. But as both of them know, when it comes to getting what you want, persistence is everything.
Kudos: 3





	Chatterbox

**Author's Note:**

> Why did I write this? Because it wouldn’t leave me alone. This was first posted on my 18+ Tumblr account; DM me if you want the account name, but I will probably delete this fic from there. This version has been edited because the one on Tumblr was a little rough.
> 
> One-shot for now, but I may write more of this series if it gains enough traction here. Until then, enjoy the crackiest of Crack Treated Seriously!

She had always known that pain would find her again.

Pain was a daily occurrence for Chell in Aperture Laboratories, usually experienced in the form of bullets, laser burns, acid splashes, and neurotoxin. Emotional pain was no exception. One of her captors had lied to her that She would reward her before trying to kill her; the other had promised to help her, then turned on her when he'd first tasted power. And both of them had tried to insult and demoralize her, even mocking her impassive responses.

She knew her silence bothered them. The sarcastic bile slung by one captor and the deep self-doubt mixed with betrayal from the other had always been thin covers for the truth. They had been begging her to respond in some way, any way, just so they could finally get at her last real secret - her thoughts. She had stayed silent out of sheer spite, and had remained so even after her release from the lab and rejoining what remained of the human race. She refused to talk to anyone she didn’t trust (which, after Aperture, amounted to everyone). It was easier than letting someone hurt her again. Easier to close out any new source of pain while she healed from her past.

She didn’t question the dreams when they started. It was the natural result of her trauma, or so she had thought.

At first, the dreams had been about Aperture. Chell had had bad dreams about that place since before she had left. She had never had them so vividly before, which bothered her at first, but she wasn't really concerned; she had lived through such dreams before. But as time went on, it became clear that these dreams weren’t just produced by her traumatized brain. She remembered every test perfectly, but in her dreams they were becoming … different. The challenges started getting harder to overcome, the endings of the dreams changing little by little. Aperture started looking different too, lit by red instead of white light, and the turrets and computers acting stranger than ever. Even GLaDOS was different in the dreams, saying things she couldn't remember and dragging her back when she tried to escape.

Then one night, the nightmares had begun.

The nightmares where Aperture wasn’t made of cold white panels but steaming rusty pipes, where the voice that stalked her was gravelly and deep instead of smooth and feminine, where the soft threats of hunting turrets were replaced by the harsh screeching of knives on metal…

She had seen his face by now, this terrifying new threat to her sanity. He didn’t look like anyone she recognized but, then again, every human she had known was dead. The burn scars and the ragged sweater would have convinced her he was a survivor of the Combine, if he ever appeared anywhere except in her dreams. His personality wasn’t like anyone she knew either. He liked talking almost as much as GLaDOS and Wheatley, but he was much more vulgar than either of them and had an even sicker sense of humor than GLaDOS. But the strangest thing she noticed about her new monster was how angry he would get at her in each new dream. He didn’t seem frustrated that she survived her nightly torments. No, he seemed more upset that Chell never fully gave in to the fear he caused her, no matter how afraid she was.

The more upset the monster became at her persistence, the more the dreams changed. Now, instead of solving puzzles and fighting off turrets, she had to run through mazes of metal and avoid the monster's razor-sharp claws. She got used to the new dreams within a week, reminding herself that this new jailer could only hold her until she woke up, and in spite of his sharp tongue she never rose to the monster's verbal taunts. In a way, he was just like GLaDOS, hijacking Chell's life for his own cruel satisfaction - and just like Her, he didn't deserve any reaction beyond her determined escape attempts and her stubborn, focused silence...

Tonight, she had ended up in a nightmare again. Her Handheld Portal Device rarely showed up in these dreams, and when it did it usually didn't work, so here she was, running full-tilt down a boiling red hallway. Her goal was the same as in her dreams about Aperture: find an escape as soon as possible, and never show fear to her captor. She never bothered to look back and see if the nightmare monster was following her. He seemed to always appear just ahead of or behind her when she least expected it. This time, it was behind her. Before she could register that he was there, she heard the metallic _shing_ of knives, and felt sharp stinging pain blossom across her back.

She’d been exposed to all kinds of pain, but being cut was new for Chell. It hurt in ways that she couldn’t have anticipated; it wasn’t like being shot or burned at all. The damage covered a larger area than a bullet ever could, and stung more deeply than the lasers. When the four blades swiped down her back, ripping her tank top and slicing shallow, bloody rows into her skin, she heard a stifled cry of pain as she fell to her knees. (He never let her have her Long Fall Boots either; he seemed to enjoy how unused she was to balancing without them.) Once she regained her composure, she looked around in confusion for the source of the pained noise. Then she looked back over her shoulder and noticed the surprise on her attacker’s scarred face, his eyes wide under the shadows of his hat.

It was only then she realized - with an odd sense of dread - that the voice she had heard was her own.

She had always known pain would find her again. She had just never thought she would succumb to it in front of another.

—

Freddy couldn’t believe his luck.

This was the first time since he’d found the robo-bitch that things had worked out in his favor. The last century had been unkind to him, almost as unkind as the time he had spent alive. Ever since the freaks from space had destroyed almost every living thing, he’d been forced to exist only as a myth spread among humans. With nobody left who remembered him well enough to truly fear him, he was stuck living as a boogeyman, something that wasn’t completely real. He flitted between dreams, a shadow of his former self, unable to kill anyone or even haunt them for too long before having to leave before people caught on and tried to stop him. His existence had been hanging by a thread for far too long.

That had all changed when he’d found the robot.

It had been an accident, really. He'd been searching through dreams for new minds to haunt, and had come across Her by pure chance, 'sleeping' in her underground lab. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but the robot’s brain worked almost the same way as a human’s, with a few small differences. As a result, Her sleep mode was very literal; She slept and woke up and dreamed just like a human. And regardless of what She might claim, there was plenty of fear in Her memories and dreams for him to use against Her.

Unfortunately, She was nowhere near as stupid as most humans. Freddy had managed to haunt Her dreams for exactly one night before She had realized what was going on and confronted him. Neither of them was certain he could be deleted from Her mind, but he wouldn’t have put it past Her to try. The robot was an infuriatingly smug bitch when She thought She had you over a barrel. But as it turned out, She didn’t want him gone. She wanted to offer him a deal. She would give him his fill of prey - thousands of test subjects trapped in cold sleep - so long as he could return one lost test subject to Her. Apparently she had caused a lot of damage to the lab and the robot before escaping, and the robot would rest easier knowing that she felt just as much fear as the robot had back then. As much as Freddy disliked the robot for catching and threatening him, he had to admit Her story sounded familiar. Besides, putting a missing lab rat back in her place sounded easy.

(He would later realize that that was his second mistake, right after targeting Her in the first place.)

She wasn't hard to find for Freddy; all he had to do was find the only person dreaming about Her. Keeping himself hidden and inducing a normal nightmare for her was easy too. And even with the robo-bitch's rule about not killing Her escapee, he'd had fun. He had watched the woman’s nightmare begin in a sterile box with some silly jazz music, and enjoyed her wide-eyed panic at her surroundings. Sure, she didn't scream - the robot had told him she couldn't - but it was pretty cute how she kept taking darting looks around like a startled kitten.

But even as early as that, something had been different with this woman's dreams. He’d seen recurring dreams before, but usually people woke up when they realized what was going on. This one just went through it with a sense of … duty? Resolve? He wasn't sure what to call it, but she accepted the dreams. She didn’t avoid sleep or drive herself crazy like his past victims had. She fell right to sleep, solved the strange tests, and beat her captors all over again, every night. Any fear she might have had became energy she used to fight back. She never gave in, no matter what horrific memories he made her relive. It didn’t seem like she wanted to do it like this; it was more like she HAD to do it like this.

Eventually he grew tired of slowly corrupting her dreams to hide from her, and started making himself more obvious. That seemed to scare her a little more, and though he was flattered, he didn't understand why that was any worse for her than the lab rat memories. Maybe the drastic change in her dreams had been enough, or maybe her imagined sense of control couldn't stand up to a new threat. Even then, she had never given up, spending each dream trying to find a way to escape. And through it all, she had never screamed or cried, remaining as mute as the robot had said she would.

It wasn’t until the first time he landed a hit on his new prey, slashing open her shirt and her back, that he finally found a weak spot that even the robo-bitch didn't know.

He was sure he’d been imagining the scream until the woman had tried to figure out where the sound was coming from. The look on her face when she realized she was the one who had screamed was the most beautiful thing Freddy had seen in decades. Apparently even she hadn’t realized she had a voice. But that was something to laugh over another time. For now, he settled for a smug grin.

“So, there’s a voice under all that stubborn after all…”

—

She was already tensing, moving to stand up or crawl away from him, but it was too late. She was nervous now, and that was all the fuel he needed. A little bit of focus, and her limbs snapped into place on the floor, keeping her pinned on all fours.

He chuckled, watching her struggle to free herself from her invisible bonds. He remembered how frustrating her tenacity was for him at first. Some of his victims had been brave or tried to fight him before, of course, but even his most unruly children hadn't had this much rebellious spirit. It was like defiance was written in her blood. But it had been a long time since he’d had a real hunt, and the stubborn ones always ended up being the most fun to break…

“You know,” he said, circling her slowly as he watched her continue to squirm, “when the robo-bitch first told me to find you, she said not to bother tryin’ to make you scream.” The woman’s head shot up at that, and he smiled wider. “Oh? Didn’t think she had anything to do with this, huh? Did ya think she wasn’t still mad?” He laughed again. “C’mon, kitten, you’re smarter than that. She’ll never forget what you did to her.”

At that, her struggling subsided, and she looked away. Was she ashamed of how she’d fought the robot, or just lost in memory? He brushed off the thought for another time; there were more important things to think about now. He came to a stop, crouching down in front of the captive woman. When she didn’t look up, he reached forward, sliding his claws gently along her neck and cheek until she had to look at him.

“Anyway,” Freddy continued, “she said she’d tried everything to make you say something before you got out, but nothin' worked for her. She said ya had to be mute by now, even if you weren’t before.” He leaned in closer, enjoying her disgusted wince as she tried to pull away from him without slicing her face open. He mentally reminded himself to stay focused. Teasing her like this was fun, but disgust wasn’t the emotion he needed. Besides, his feisty kitten deserved to know just what she had gotten herself into.

“So in other words, all this time…” he sneered, “I’ve been lettin’ you off easy.” Her brow furrowed, as if she were somehow refusing to understand. As annoyingly smart as the woman was sometimes, the robo-bitch had warned him he’d have to spell some things out…

“But now that we've both heard that pretty voice a’ yours?” He tapped the claws lightly underneath her chin. “I’m startin’ to think our little nighttime ‘talks’ are too one-sided.”

And there it was. Comprehension followed by fear dawned behind her cold blue eyes. Her struggling resumed, becoming a bit more frantic before he slid his hand up her jaw and tightened his grip on her face. The four new shallow cuts on her cheek trickled blood, a noise of pain almost surfaced in her throat, and she stopped again, locking her terrified eyes on him. He was wrong before. _This_ was the most beautiful thing he’d seen in decades.

“Aw, don’t be scared, kitten,” he cooed. “I’m sure ya got more noises in there somewhere; we just gotta find ‘em. In fact…” He held up his claws, still tipped with her blood, in front of her face. “Somethin’ tells me that if I give you the right ‘motivation’… you’ll turn into a regular chatterbox.”


End file.
